Comrade Borge Departs

Tomas Borge, who passed away at 81 last month, was the last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN), a communist revolutionary movement allied with the USSR and Cuba. Borge was a key player in the regime’s repressions, and that calls for a look back.

The FSLN also sided with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) but this was not just a foreign policy question. The comandantes did not look kindly on Nicaragua’s small Jewish community, whose synagogue was firebombed during a religious service in 1978. The following year the FSLN toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza and took power.

FSLN “divine mobs” chanted anti-Semitic slogans outside the synagogue, which the FSLN confiscated along with the property of Jewish families. The regime arrested Abraham Gorn a leader of the Jewish community. As minister of the interior, Tomas Borge was in charge of the regular and secret police, so he surely ordered those repressions. Abraham Gorn was able to escape and flee the country. The rest of Nicaragua’s Jews fled into exile.

The FSLN regime also had a problem with indigenous people. The comandantes waged a Stalin-style relocation campaign against the Miskito Indians of the Atlantic coast, many of whom were Protestant Christians. FSLN forces bombed villages and burned churches, killing those trapped inside. Filmmaker Werner Herzog made a documentary on the conflict, “Ballad of the Little Soldier,” and denounced the FSLN’s “concentration camps.” Russell Means of the American Indian Movement (AIM) talked of organizing an international brigade of warriors to defend Nicaragua’s native peoples.

Organizations such as Amnesty International called attention to FSLN repressions but the American left looked the other way, particularly the religious left. National Council of Churches boss Arie Brouwer conceded only “mistakes” by the government, the left’s default position when confronted by undeniable evidence of Sandinista atrocities. The NCC funded the Evangelical Committee for Aid to Development (CEPAD), a pro-FSLN front group that justified attacks on the Miskitos as “a plan to guarantee their rights.”

Sojourners magazine referred to “serious errors of judgment,” and allowed that the FSLN had “at times been insensitive to racism and injustice.” Asked if the campaign against the Miskitos was a violation of human rights, Maryknoll missionary Pat Hynds said that “militarily it was a move that had to be made.”

what is difference between leftists, named themselves as liberals, progressists, Democrats, etc and communists, Islamists, maoists, sandinists? Some different rethoric but the same essence, the same goal, the same tactic of opponents intimidation, indoctrination starting in kindergarden, MSM working only for them, double standard, lie, facts distortion, dictatorship, etc. Even in our country "Do as I said, not as I do" is our WH administration/BHO style.

Looking4Sanity

The difference lies in their varying visions of utopia…each group envisioning themselves as the eventual masterminds and overlords. That also includes the Fabian Soc-ialists / New World Order crowd.

Your observation about their essence is spot on.

All of these people view the Creator as either mythological or an absentee landlord. That belief gives them license to play god with other people's lives…or so they think.

Looking4Sanity

"the religious Left"

ROFLMFAO! Now THERE'S an oxymoron if ever there was one!

Leftists are zealots, to be sure…but religious? Perhaps in the way a Pharisee considers himself religious, but not in any sense that most Christians would recognize.

Schlomotion

Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley does not include in his article that the pogrom against the Jews of Nicaragua, was because they were selling Israeli weapons (Uzis, Galils, STOIs) to the Somoza regime, in short, acting as courtiers to a hereditary dictatorship. He also left out that now a Jew, Israel Lewites is a top leader in the Sandinista Renovation Movement, the heir to the FSLN.

I was there, and saw the Galil weapons and the Arava transporters which were sold to all latin nations due tot heir versatility, quick landing and take off. Israel obtained huge amounts of useless weapons , cleaning up Lebanon from Russian weaponry provided to the PLO. It could not be used by the IDF. When the Reagan administration approached the Israelis for a supply line that will not finger the U.S, Israel could perform the favor with Iranians providing cash through intemediaries to Israelis for spare parts for American equipment, legacy of the 70's purchases, and through murky channels deliveries of small arms were made to Honduras. It was an ugly war, and sadly, the CIA grip on the Contras was so bad, the leadership, so sleazy, they never had a hope in hell, much like the Bay of Pigs.

Ghostwriter

What a surprise! Another rancid,Jew-hating,Israel-bashing post from Shlockmotion. I never would have expected such a thing.

Indioviejo

The lefties excused Stalin,s genocide in the Ukraine, they applauded it just as they do Fidel Castro murderous regime, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez and the Sandinistas. Tomas Borge Martinez was not the only torturer and murderer in the Revolution. Most Sandinistas are. Israel Lewites may be related to Herty Lewites and regardless of whether they are Jewish or not, the are certainly Communist. So much for Nicaraguan freedom and Democracy. The Sandinista Renovation Movement is composed by the outs in the piñata. Finally, every country has the government it deserves, and that is why we got OBAMA.

Al Redwood

he was a professional freeloading gangster, a terrorist and a torturer! He ordered a person I knew, a real none political Latin refugee held in the basement of the sinister H.Q of "internal security" building (formerly-Bank of America), where he was held for months and was severely abused. Before liberation I saw this monster in Leon , he did sleazy and low class but at that time, I thought that this is what Comandante Gurrillero look like only to hear years later of what happened to my companion. Few will regret his late departure.

Ghostwriter

I'm amazed that Schlomotion didn't praise Borge. This guy hated Jews as much as Schlockmotion does.